One of the many benefits of home schooling is that your child will learn fantastic time management. Getting in all the day's work, along with any sports, art, music, or volunteer work outside of the structure of school will force your home schooled child, and you, to learn great time management skills. One way in which your home schooled child can manage and save time better is by learning to study more efficiently.
Your child could spend two hours studying history, playing with the radio, taking a call or two, and basically meandering. Or he could spend 30 minutes solely devoted to the study of history and basically get the same amount of work accomplished. Learning to study intensely will not only save your home schooled child time, but he will also benefit and learn more from the intense study sessions than he would if he spent more distracted and disinterested time studying the same material.
Even if you never learned to study with intensity yourself, you can still teach your home schooled children how to study intensely by following just a few simple guidelines. The first one of these is scheduling. Many experienced home schooling parents will tell you that creating a schedule and sticking to it is one of the most important aspects of making home schooling work. Scheduling is also an important part of studying intensely. Home schooled children will need to set a time to study each subject with the help of his parents. Depending on the age of the home schooled child and the subject matter, varying amounts of time will be needed. When you schedule study time for your home schooled children is important too. Make sure it is a time of the day when they are naturally very alert and awake. Furthermore, you should make sure to schedule breaks for your home schooled children during intense study sessions.
Another key part in making sure your home schooled child's study sessions are productive is by making sure the area in which they work is conducive to studying. There should be plenty of light, good chairs and desks that are comfortable that won't contribute to unnecessary eyestrain, back pain, or pain in the hands, wrists, or forearms. The home schooled child's study environment should be free from distractions: no telephones, stereos or television. It should be big enough for books and to stretch the legs during a break. Your home schooled child may also benefit from studying occasionally with other home schooled children for both social purposes and so they can quiz each other on material to reinforce what they know by teaching it to others.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.
Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.